Dreaming In Piano

What language do we dream in? Music is a sort of language, so maybe it's possible for a pianist to dream in piano? What would such a dream sound like?

Introducing Chad Twedt, an accomplished pianist, composer and piano instructor with a background in mathematics in Reno, NV and, and incidentally, a fan of myNoise. As a composer, Chad has produced everything from 4-piano music to video game piano arrangements to 2-piano teacher duets.

After Chad and I agreed to collaborate, he surprised me with his openness to the collaborative process, an openness I wasn't expecting from a classically trained pianist. He recorded 9 stems, leaving 1 out just for me, and he invited me to do anything I wanted to the other 9 stems, such as adding synths or other effects. But even with this unrestricted freedom, I limited myself to keeping all 10 stems derived solely from what Chad had recorded... and within this limitation, I found some additional invention and creativity of my own and the piano dream emerged.

Some soundscapes take a long time to complete, and this is among those that took the longest to compose, to record, and then to turn into this ever-morphing soundscape. Listeners might be interested to know that this difficulty is very much related to the unique kind of soundscape that this is. One of the ways soundscapes can be categorized is by their degree of musicality. Some soundscapes are purely non-musical, consisting of nothing other than sounds from nature, people, industry, etc. These soundscapes might sometimes be difficult to record (especially if it requires hiking to the top of Pike's Peak!), but these soundscapes are the generally easiest to conceive and produce. A second category might be musical soundscapes, incorporating various musical sounds in an improvisatory manner spaced far apart, creating effects that are musical but not necessarily music, depending on how broad one's definition of music is. These soundscapes require careful tonal consideration, but rhythm is left to chance, and meter is nonexistent. The third category would be soundscapes that make up what anyone would consider to be music, even the layman with the most rigid definition of music. In these soundscapes, everything is considered, including rhythm and meter. This produces magnitudes more work for the composer, the performer, and the audio engineer, but when the material is high-quality, the final product is well worth it.

Chad and I thoroughly enjoyed the collaboration, not only because we spoke the same language, but also because we challenged and learned a lot from each other over the 16-month collaboration. Releasing a soundscape like this one requires a lot of work, patience and email exchanges, sharing ideas, advice and recordings. With Chad, every email was a source of an interesting discussion. Chad has incredible musical talent, which I could trade against some sound design skills.

I would like to thank Chad for the time and efforts he put in a soundscape that will soon become a Classic of myNoise!

By the way, if you're a fan of the Matrix movies, it might occur to you that this soundscape was released on the same day that Matrix Resurrections was released in most theaters. You might also like to know that Chad, coincidentally, is the author of the best Matrix website available.

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